With just a blank sheet of paper and a single point, students can fold a genuine parabola. Students model the technique with Sketchpad to reveal the underlying mathematics. The link to the activity itself is to a zip file that contains both the activity in pdf format and the corresponding sketch, as well as four other sketches for further exploration.

This material is based upon work supported by the
National Science Foundation under Grant DUE-0226284.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Science Foundation.